Someone told me when I first moved to New York seven years ago that this was a transient place. I certainly didn’t think a city this dense and this fluid could ever feel like home. Yet, as time passed, facades and buildings grew familiar, rounding a corner brought the expectant smell of a chocolate croissant, bars and restaurants became landmarks of memory – an insightful conversation, epic meal or hilarious story.

I love this city’s energy – the unique amalgamation of hearing five different languages as you walk down the street, wandering into a restaurant as if transported to another country, the contrast of raw grit and hustle on one block and top-end epicurean refinement on the next. Not to mention street art, museums, snow days, summer streets, pizza, artists, singers, architecture, climbing, hiking, sailing, cycling - the list goes on.

Of all the things in New York, I love the people in this city the most. New York is a hard place to live - it’s expensive, the weather is brutally temperamental, and the hustle will chew you up and spit you out hopefully just once if fortune smiles.  Survival in NYC is an act of sheer will and yet, in my tenure here, I’m thankful to have journeyed alongside friends old and new, each walking, running and some dancing through with elegance and tenacity.

I’m going to miss my family, friends, church, and colleagues turned friends who hustled alongside me as we built companies, volunteered, conceptualized products, road mapped projects, prayed and counseled each other through hardship and and dreamt together about how we could make this world a better place one relationship and conversation at a time.

This next chapter of life brings me to Hong Kong where I’ll be leading the analytics team at the South China Morning Post, a newspaper & media company recently acquired by Alibaba. While I’m excited for the new opportunity and working in Asia, I’m also anxious about the unknown and saddened to leave this little town that has become ever more like home.

With more joyful memories than I can count or express gratitude for, I bid this beautiful city and its lovely people farewell for now. Thanks to each of you who made this city home - for sharing a piece of your life and story with me. A wise man once told me, "humanity desires one fundamental thing - to know and to be known, to be loved and to be missed." If you're reading this, I'm thankful to know you and be known by you and I will miss you. May we cross paths again, whether it be New York, Hong Kong or beyond - the adventure continues!

Finally a little touch of CS Lewis for the road.

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

Ps. All contact info is the same including phone # which can still receive texts so don't be a stranger!